Vana Secures Investment from YZi Labs, CZ Joins as Advisor; VANA Token Plummets Infini Hacked for $49M; Stablecoin Neobank Investigates Breach Bybit Restores Ether Reserves After $1.5B Hack; CEO Confirms Recovery

Crypto-AI startup Vana has secured an undisclosed investment from YZi Labs, with Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao joining as an advisor. Vana focuses on data ownership and enables users to pool data into Data DAOs, where they earn rewards and retain ownership in AI models. The investment comes shortly after Vana launched its mainnet and token in December 2024, with VANA trading down 82% since then, at a market cap of around $192 million and a fully diluted valuation of $747 million. Vana's other high-profile investors include Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and Polychain Capital, having previously raised $25 million in funding rounds.

Hong Kong-based stablecoin neobank and payments platform Infini suffered an attack resulting in a loss of approximately $49 million. Security analysts confirmed the hack, noting that the amount was siphoned in USDC from a smart contract and sent to an address funded by crypto mixer Tornado Cash. The exploit occurred when the attacker abused compromised administrative privileges to change the smart contract settings and drain funds, which were later converted into ether. Infini is investigating the breach, offering a bounty for the stolen funds' return, and assuring users that the incident was not due to a private key leak and that those impacted would be compensated.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed that the platform has filled its ether shortfall, just days following the record $1.5 billion hack on the crypto exchange last week. Bybit later released an audited proof of reserves report to verify it has restored client assets on a 1:1 basis. To address the shortfall and maintain operations, Bybit secured emergency liquidity through short-term bridge loans from partners in the crypto industry, subsequently purchasing large amounts of ETH via OTC transactions to replenish its reserves. The hack, involving a manipulated multi-signature approval process, resulted in over 400,000 ETH plus other ether derivative tokens being stolen by the attackers, believed to be North Korea's Lazarus Group.